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Slayer > World Painted Blood > Reviews
Slayer - World Painted Blood

Its grown on me a little - 65%

Grumpy Cat, September 30th, 2016

This song is a bit of bitter sweet treat. It has things going for it, it has things that don't. On the one hand it's an odd cut to be chosen as the opening and title track of an album because, well because I would expect the band to choose a better cut for both roles, on the other hand though, that makes this song a pretty sample of what's coming up, as a single should, because it does paint an accurate portrait of the sound and direction the rest of the album will take.

Some parts of the song feel a bit lazy and are obvious call backs to some of the band's better days, like the intro with it's slow build up and eerie guitar lead being a bit reminiscent of Raining Blood and Hell Awaits, but not as well executed.

Other parts take obvious queues from more recent trends like the main riff, which can easily be experienced by humming "chug chug chuggy chug chug chuggy chug" loudly to yourself. In fairness Slayer has never exactly written a plethora of technically tinged riffs, but they also never sounded like a more metallic Earth Crisis before now.

The fact of the matter though is that this is Slayer we're talking about, the guys music is about 2 steps away from being pure METAL ESSENCE given tangible physical form, they can take all the most banal elements of metal and still make a solid banger. They however are still human though and cannot take a bunch of negatives and rearrange them into a positive.

That slow solo is still boring as a guitar solo can get, Tom's vocals have still aged and he sounds strained in a few places and that guitar tone leaves a lot to be desired, especially if they plan on whipping out a full on breakdown with it, which like the intro seems to call back to Raining Blood, except while the intro was still passable, the breakdown is a mess awkwardly pairing mosh sensibility with droning spoken word vocals that are completely harmless.

The good outweighs the bad though and while this certainly should never be anyone's favorite Slayer song, I do find it to be worth returning to on occasion, or perhaps its just worth not skipping if it came up in the queue for a streaming service.

This is NOT bad. Or even mediocre. And you know it - 90%

DaddyZeus67, December 25th, 2009

Now kids seriously, this really is a damn good song. I don't see why this particular single is so overlooked here...I mean 3 reviews and average 39%? It should be more like 79%! Because in all honesty this is the best out of those 3 singles that Slayer did before putting out the album. Psychopathy Red was a short and vicious attack sounding like a rejected track from Reign In Blood but Hate Worldwide was one really washed out attempt, there was like one good riff in the entire song and that riff was only in the beginning. But this track, this is way more arranged and more mosh-inducing. There's a coherent intro, decent structure (not entirely verse-chorus shit), kickass riffing, thrash break, everything. I admit some parts sound a little out of place (like the chorus and that melodic riff after the 2nd chorus) but goddamn if this song doesn't get some serious headbanging going on.

Now let's see, the song starts with this type of intro that is first silent then gets louder and louder. What we can hear is some drumming and a weird spoken word piece in some language I don't know. Then there's some guitar melody. This goes on for 56 seconds then you get a chug riff and soon all the instruments start kicking your head right off. Yeah sure this is relatively slower than Slayer's other fast songs (you really don't need an example do you?) but so what, this one should still make any real metal fan bang their heads. The riff is Slayer's typical tremolo stuff although this one is more rhythmic ("chug") and not just straight forward fast tremolo. Production makes the drums sound really loud (even though obviously when a beast like Dave Lombardo is playing, he's gonna hit those drums hard) but that shouldn't be too hard to get past, and the vocals are good too (yeah yeah we all know Tom Araya can't scream anymore like he did in Reign In Blood, waah waah, but really he does sound better here than on anything since then).

Chorus is where things slow down and it sounds like the song is gonna build up to something. You know that when in a song there's no snare and no cymbals, just bass drums and toms going with the guitars and then the actual drum beat starts and the song kicks off. Well in this song it simply starts the verse again, as if the chorus is building up for verse and not the other way around like it should...did I mention that this song is not perfect?

After the second chorus which is around the 2 minute mark we get this kinda melodic riff passage. Now this part may not be full blown thrash brutality but it's still good. And the things get even better when you find out what it was building up to....2:19 fucking THRASH BREAK! Mosh! We didn't get these at all in those 2 other singles so now it's even more than fucking welcome. Seriously this kickass thrash break is why I gave this song 90%. Without it my score would have been something like 70...but not this time. This time we bang our heads. Anyway after this we get Hanneman's solo with the song slowing down even more than previously. Nope, these guys did not return to Show No Mercy days in terms of guitar solos (they had good solos on that album) so all we get is noisy bends, pinch harmonics and whammy bars.

Then there's another build up part with somewhat de-emphasized guitars and Araya's spoken part. He goes on speaking louder and louder until he's yelling already and at 2:49 he does an insane scream....or as insane as he can get anymore. "In which we trust a secret government is now in total COLLAPSE!" then the last verse comes and the chorus again and the song is pretty much there. That very ending is a kind of build-up-sounding part again like the chorus but it's pretty quickly over. That was 5:53 of the best Slayer you have heard since Seasons In The Abyss (that's not to say Divine Intervention and Christ Illusion weren't good records but really this is just better than anything on them). By the way the rest of this new record is great too. Check it out if you're not too "tr00" and "elite" for post-80's Slayer.

They need a new coat of paint desperately - 40%

Twistedeyes, October 21st, 2009

The title track for the upcoming World Painted Blood album just seems like a rehash of older Slayer material although watered down in some aspects. Nothing you haven't heard before and done a lot better.

For a Slayer song you would expect either speed or catchy riffs but this is neither. The song sticks to an okay sem rememorable thrashy main riff although the spoken intro is quite annoying and pointless. Tom Araya's vocals are totally embedded in the riffs of King and Hanneman (similar to Black Sabbath's Paranoid although more embedded) to the point that he can be quite hard to understand despite the relatively clean and tame vocal style. Tom's vocals have blatantly aged not very well and he show signs of struggling to keep up despite the studio magic and mid paced speed of the song. The drum work is alright also, I like the drums in the intro, it gives the song a build up although doesn't act upon it very well. past the intro the drums are nothing that any other generic drummer couldn't do. Lombardo's fast drum work that the typical slayer fan would enjoy is absent from any part of the song. Bass isn't particularly worth mentioning in any aspect.

Slayer were never praised for their solos and have made some songs worse for them e.g Raining Blood but the solo in this song is a new dimension of horrible for Slayer. The solo sounds like a mosquito and a chainsaw having sex, such an annoying drone produced by the whammy. How could they think that the solo would have worked in any context? I would of rated the song a fair bit higher if the solo was absent. The spoken bits within World Painted Blood could of also been eradicated as they only serve the purpose of adding length to the song and don't contribute to the song in anyway. 5:53 could of been cut down to a solid 5 minutes and been better for the experience.

If you have heard any of Slayer's material from the 80's there is no reason to own this. Slayer are clearly thrash metal on this release but it adds nothing new or remotely exciting to the genre. Perhaps a first time Slayer listener will appreciate it but a veteran fan will turn their back upon it. It will be sad that when the full length of World Painted Blood comes out that it will most likely be mediocre Slayer drible and receive more recognition and sales than most of the best thrash releases of the 2000 era e.g Kreator, Destruction and even Megadeth. You can respect them for still giving it a go in 2009 although not a very good effort. World Painted Blood is nearly three decades since their debut but this dog has to be put down asap before they embarrass themselves even more.

What, again? - 4%

MercyfulSatyr, October 6th, 2009

It seems that Slayer have sunk so far into the mire that there is simply no coming back. They’ve already released two abysmal singles, and don’t seem to care in the least that they are quickly losing the upward momentum they had only barely established in the first place. As if further evidence were necessary, their worst single yet has just come to spit in the faces of all things musically worthwhile.

“World Painted Blood” is the latest in a string of particularly nausea-inducing tracks from a band that ceased to be at all relevant almost twenty years ago. The band seems to fully intend to shatter any and all hopes of an increase in quality, rather pointedly traveling the opposite direction with each and every new song revealed. “Psychopathy Red” sucked, “Hate Worldwide” didn’t fare much better, and now this latest sleeping pill has earned the prestigious title of “the worst of the worst.” Everything comes off as completely stale, no doubt due to the incredibly overdone production. (People called Endgame “digital?” Just listen to this!) As a fairly predictable supplement to the sterilization of sound, Slayer has also delved into Exodus’s recently established kingdom of pseudo-thrash metalcore. Seriously, the riffs reek of chug overkill, and Araya’s vocals through most of the song consist of monotone barking (albeit a little less strained than on previous singles). The drums have an awful, weak tone, and lack all traces of Dave Lombardo’s signature power. Of course, they fit right in with all the other layers of vomit on display.

The first minute or so consists of literally nothing but incomprehensibly quiet foreign speech and, eventually, some horribly boring slow “riff,” just before erupting into a chug-fest. The solo is similarly uninspired drivel, and actually manages to suck more than the verse patterns. Araya, at a rare point when he’s not ripping off “Flesh Storm” in the verse (which itself simply copied “War Ensemble”), engages in a spoken rant worse than Megadeth’s lackluster efforts ever managed to get. The combined experience is one of almost physical pain, together with a strong urging to punch the entire band (and the producer) in the mouth – with brass knuckles.

Do these guys honestly think that what they’re coming up with nowadays even remotely has any worth? It’s quite tempting to say that at the moment, they are even worse than Anthrax, extreme as that may be. Judging by all the information released about the new album – the singles, the artwork, the track names, and so on – World Painted Blood will prove another absolutely phenomenal exercise in auditory trauma. Don’t expect much from this one.

Well, not the worst I've ever heard - 73%

ShadeOfDarkness, September 30th, 2009

Slayer is one of my all time favourite bands. They have been that for over a year now. I was completely going insane about Slayer a year ago, and I still am. So what does Slayer have to offer here?

The song starts with a kind of creepy intro, which reminds me of some of their old intros (Hell Awaits, Reign In Blood). Then it goes into a Slayer-like riff, and after that, the drumming and Araya's vocals kick in! This song is actually pretty interesting, since I have never heard a Slayer song in this tempo before. There may be, but not one I've heard yet. Either their songs are faster, or slower. So it was interesting that they would finally make a song like this.

I know that there is one thing that's gonna annoy me with this album, and that is the drum sound. That annoys me of course in this song as well. I hope we don't get another St. Anger to join Metallica's disgrace. But I don't think so though. Slayer had their down-time with Diabolus In Musica, which was a dissapointment indeed. Then they got back in the game with Christ Illusion, but how are they gonna do this time? At least, this song sounds promising.

The music is for the most Thrash. It's kind of re-thrash, since Slayer is pretty good at doing stuff they've already done before. However, I really don't care about this. The stuff Slayer was doing before was good, and now we get to hear similar stuff with more modern production. I don't hate Slayer just because they're kind of ripping some of their old riffs. As long as the riffs are cool, that's what it's all about. Even though Megadeth has gotten much further than Slayer when it comes to being more original, Slayer still kicks a fair amount of ass with their new stuff.

But now I've been focusing too much on comparing Slayer with other bands, as well as their early work. So let's pretend that I've never heard a Slayer song before, and then I heard World Painted Blood. Then I know I would have said: "Wow! What a great song!" However, since I've already heard many other Slayer songs, this song doesn't really surprise me that much. So we will just have to wait and see if this album has some other good songs on it, but I have a feeling this one is gonna be one of the highlights!